Beginner Cycling

Out, Cold

Riding through the quiet of winter for the first time, our rookie lets his new cycling clothes do the talking

colin mcenroe

(Photo by Daniel Zakroczemski)

The Arnoldale Road Sunday Ride Guys were happy to have me. The weather had turned cold, and turnout was low. By "low," I mean there were two of them, Bill and David.

They seemed a little stressed about my carbon-fiber bike, which, I've learned, makes me appear speedier than I really am. "You might be too fast for us," David said. What made this occasion unique was that it seemed like he might actually have been right. David was standing over a Gary Fisher hybrid. Bill had a racing bike that was state of the art—during the Gerald Ford administration.

That seems to be one of the potluck aspects of riding in cold weather: You never know who's going to show and what they're going to bring. About 75 percent of my fellow cyclists disappeared after the first hard frost and the switch back to standard time. You've undoubtedly seen that falloff if you live anywhere with an actual winter. The Cool Kids, a bunch of century riders responsible for luring me into the sport, turn out to regard cycling as an exclusively warm-weather thing. "I put my bike away for the year," their leader, Mark, told me when he saw me out one frosty day. "But keep me posted on your progress."

Bill and David and I got rolling. There was a slate-gray sky and a wind that, though it was still early in the season, was blowing straight out of mid-February. Here's my idea of progress: Two miles in, I wasn't in danger of succumbing to hypothermia.

My first ride in air chilled below 40, just a few weeks earlier, had been a shock. My hands, in their usual fingerless gloves, were the first to go. It was like trying to operate the gears with 10 frozen fish sticks. My ears and feet went next, then heat, in a very general way, began rising out of my body and returning, through the darkness of space, to the sun.

I rode home whimpering. At my first available chance I hustled over to the bike shop and asked the owner, Dave Arnold, who has gradually emerged as a divinely appointed intermediary between my new interest in cycling and my bank account, what I should buy.

"Do you get out for any other winter sports?" he asked.

"I cross-country ski."

"It's the same principle," he told me. "Layering is good."

I purchased a whole bunch of stuff, including, of course, a balaclava, even though the name of that particular piece of headwear is far too easy to confuse with the Greek pastry and the Italian word for salted cod. There should be some kind of international commission working on that.